When the power goes out or you’re visiting the great outdoors with gadgets in tow, you might carry a portable power station — and Anker might have just released the most advanced one yet. The new $1,400 Anker 757 Powerhouse offers 1500W of power and 1229Wh of capacity from a Lithium Iron Phosphate (LiFePO4) battery, which it promises is faster to charge, longer-lasting, and might even be safer than the lithium-ion battery packs you’ll typically find in the market.
LiFePO4 batteries aren’t anything new in the battery space. You’ll find them in some electric cars because they don’t need to be replaced as often and because they don’t turn into a raging inferno when hundreds or thousands of them are badly damaged in an accident. The downside is weight: most consumer electronics don’t use them because they’re far heavier than lithium-ion at the same capacity. The Anker 757 Powerhouse weighs 43.8 pounds, nearly twice as much as a 1000Wh Jackery power station but with only around 20 percent more capacity. Jackery has a 1500Wh power station that weighs less, too.
But we’re starting to see some big, beefy power stations embrace LiFePO4 for the benefits, including upwards of 3,000 battery charge cycles and the ability to charge to 80 percent in just an hour off the wall — things Anker’s 757, the Bluetti AC200P, and the crowdfunded CTECHi ST2000 all boast.
Mind you, those rival products are even larger and heavier and more powerful at 2000W of power and 2000Wh capacity, and the Bluetti appears to have more outputs as well — including six three-prong AC outlets and a pair of wireless charging pads up top to rest your phone. But Anker’s can deliver a full 100W of USB-C PD charging to a powerful laptop (the others top out at 60W PD, which the Anker has, too), as well as three three-prong outlets, three two-prong outlets, four USB-A ports at 12W each, and a car lighter socket port.
Anker suggests its battery may be faster to charge from the sun than most, too — it’s able to get to 80 percent in just 3.6 hours with a 300W, triple-solar-panel array Anker will be selling for an undisclosed price soon. TechRadar writes that the Bluetti can technically charge in under three hours from 700W worth of panels, and CTECHi says its battery takes nine hours to fully charge from a set of 500W panels, though both allow you to combine solar and a plug if you need to top up faster.
The other notable difference is that Anker is offering a 5-year warranty on its battery, quite a bit longer than the two years the other companies offer, and it claims its battery should still charge up to 100 percent capacity — not the typical 80 percent — after 3,000 charge cycles. And Anker says if you leave it sitting for a year after a charge, it should still have 62 percent capacity remaining.
Oh, and it’s got a nifty light bar, I guess. Might be useful if you’re trying to plug things in when it’s dark.
